


Endgame thoughts (about Natasha)

by Shadowscast_meta (Shadowscast)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Meta, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:54:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22993540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowscast/pseuds/Shadowscast_meta
Summary: My thoughts about Natasha Romanov's arc, immediately after seeing Endgame.
Kudos: 3
Collections: March Meta Matters Challenge





	Endgame thoughts (about Natasha)

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted here: https://shadowscast.dreamwidth.org/108822.html
> 
> Uploaded to AO3 on 2020-03-02.

I saw Marvel's _Endgame_ last week, and I have some thoughts about it.

I have lots of thoughts, really! Like: wouldn't having 2.5 billion humans suddenly _reappear_ (into a world where the survivors have moved on, adjusted to a dramatically changed world, and presumably greatly reduced their agricultural capacity) cause quite a lot of problems?

But what I'd like to talk about in this entry is Natasha Romanoff. Because I'm really struggling to decide whether to see her fate as a heroic sacrifice or a callous short-changing of her character (which isn't to say that it couldn't be both).

Before I talk about her end, I want to talk about her journey, and what she means to me.

I've been watching the MCU movies more-or-less from the beginning (pre-Avengers, I mostly was seeing them on DVD a year or so after they came out, since I had a baby and wasn't getting to theatres very much in those days, but still).

I quickly discovered that my favourite characters were Loki ( _mmm_ , Loki...) and Black Widow. They've got a lot in common, actually, and they both conform to a trope that I clearly enjoy: the reformed villain with a lot of emotional damage, who is also pretty. (See also: Spike, Faith, Snape, Draco as seen in post-series fanfic where he actually reforms, and Prince Zuko. Actually I think it all started with Kit Cloudkicker in Disney's TaleSpin, which I watched when I was 13. Did you know that he used to be an Air Pirate?) *ahem* Actually Loki isn't even particularly reformed, but it's in the moments when he teams up with Thor that I love him best, and that's the Loki that I look for in fanfic. But I digress!

Black Widow had lots of delicious, mysterious darkness in her past, but she was fighting on the side of good. She was fighting alongside the boys—and to start with, they were _all_ boys, except for her.

So—and this is just painfully obvious, isn't it?—besides being an appealing character, she was important to me because she was the woman who kicked ass alongside the men.

There's a lot of feminist theory to unpack there! I'm not saying that women (or people) _have_ to kick ass in order to be great characters. I also don't want to undervalue traditionally feminine-coded roles or ways of being. But, that said: the MCU is a series of action movies, and the exciting roles are the ass-kicking ones. And also: I am a woman who works in a male-dominated professional field, and other than fanfic my hobbies also tend to be male-dominated. So I am deeply invested in the idea of women doing things that used to be reserved for men.

Black Widow never got her own movie, but she was sufficiently present in the MCU lead-up to _Infinity War/Endgame_ that she felt to me like she was an Avenger on equal footing with Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, and Captain America. Anyway, my personal alternate title for _Captain America: Winter Soldier_ is _Steve and Natasha: Road Trip._

At the start of _Endgame_ , I was thrilled to see that Natasha was now running the show. I mean, obviously she was tired and sad, and it was a messed-up world, but I was just super duper happy to see her sitting at that desk and coordinating her agents in the field. I could have enjoyed watching a timeline that legitimately continued from there: a lot of the people that we loved are gone, but there are new people to love, and they're growing into their new roles, and Natasha is in charge now. (And she wasn't the only woman anymore!) And since I was going into the movie completely unspoiled (other than knowing that there was another Spiderman movie coming out, which did suggest some kind of resurrection in the works—but prequels are certainly a thing), for a little while there at the beginning I wondered if that _was_ the story that we were going to be told.

But it wasn't. And I can't really complain, because I do love me a good time heist. (I do! Time-travel-hijinks is another of my very favourite tropes!)

Okay, so now let's talk about what happens to Natasha.

I have a lot of "on the one hand ... but on the other hand"-structured thoughts.

To the extent that the story posits that Natasha was disposable because she didn't have a family, I am pissed off at it. Particularly because there was that one really questionable line back in some movie or other, when Natasha seemed to draw an equivalence between the fact that she'd been sterilized and the Hulk lurking inside of Bruce, in suggesting that they were both monsters. But on the other hand, in my own reading of that line of Natasha's, I always took it to have a slightly broader scope: she wasn't saying that she was a monster because she couldn't have children, she was saying that she was a monster because she had been raised to be _nothing but_ a spy and assassin.

And one also has to consider: having an adorable tiny daughter did not save Tony.

And also, _within_ the story, it is Natasha herself who decides that Clint must live to be reunited with his family, and that is a decision that she makes with love and agency. From an external-to-the-narrative point of view, Natasha gets sacrificed (because the writers decide to kill her), but internal to the narrative she only goes over the cliff because she fights _very hard_ for it. She has to beat Clint in hand-to-hand combat for the privilege of dying, and he clearly wants it just as badly as she does.

Sacrificing one's self for the greater good is the ultimate heroic act, and it's a very exciting thing for a character to do, but _being dead_ is an extremely boring thing for a character to do (which is why we see so many fictional characters get somehow restored to life following their heroic sacrifices!). I guess I'm finally permanently torn: I respect Natasha's sacrifice, but I'm disappointed that her story ended before we ever got to see her being a protagonist rather than a sidekick or ensemble-member.

I wanted to see Natasha grow and change and be a team leader and get her own damn movie. But Natasha wanted to wipe out the red in her ledger and save her beloved friend and put his broken family back together. So, okay. I guess that's how her story ends.


End file.
